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The Food Programme

Skint Foodies

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4977 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2013

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sheila Dillon meets the cooks specialising in great food on small budgets, part of a world of food blogging influenced by life of benefits, periods of homelessness and shopping budgets that can be as little as ten pounds a week.

One of the highest profile blogs is "A Girl called Jack", written by Jack Monroe, a single mum who lives in Southend-On-Sea. Out of work, having complications with benefits and reduced to feeding her small boy Weetabix mashed with water, she went online to share her experience and started writing about food.

What followed was a record of some of the most savvy shopping tips to be found anywhere, from dishes that can be cooked for 27p a portion, through to a forensic guide to every supermarket shelf, freezer cabinet and fresh produce aisle.

In a recent report by Oxfam, the numbers of people now using food banks has reached 500,000, linked, charities say, to recent reforms of the benefits system. The government disputes this link, but food insecurity is increasingly found in every region of the UK.

Others who have taken to writing about their efforts to cook and eat well on low budgets include Belfast born, now London based, Miss South who along with her brother, who lives in Manchester, Mr North, share recipes and pictures of the food they enjoy. Miss South recently came out as being "properly poor" in a blog posted last November and her writing has inspired others who need to cook on food budgets hovering between £15 and £20 a week.

The third blogger in the programme is Tony, aka Skint Foodie. Once a high flying, restaurant going professional, his writing documents a determination to eat well despite losing everything to alcoholism.

Producer: Dan Saladino.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You don't need us to tell you there's a general election coming.

0:04.6

So what does it mean for you?

0:06.4

Every day on newscast we dissect the big talking points,

0:10.1

the ones that you want to know more about.

0:12.3

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0:16.8

And with help from some of the best BBC journalists,

0:19.4

we'll untangle the stories that matter to you.

0:23.0

Join me, Laura Kunsberg, Adam Fleming, Chris Mason and Patty O'Connell for our daily podcast.

0:29.0

Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds.

0:32.0

Hello, I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program.

0:39.0

For information on the BBC's terms and conditions of use,

0:42.0

visit W.W. dot BBC. the BBC's terms and conditions of use visit

0:42.8

www dot BBC.co. UK slash radio for and now enjoy the podcast.

0:52.0

Can you read it too or not?

0:53.0

Do you want me to read it now?

0:55.0

Okay.

0:56.0

It says if you have a passion for good food but very little money, what do you eat?

1:00.0

How do you organize your kitchen?

1:02.0

Where do you shop? Well that's the situation I'm in and that's what this site is about.

1:06.0

This is a program about survival. The stories of people who've been to places most of us, luckily, will never see.

1:14.0

A few years ago I went from being an affluent, an avid restaurant goer and a home cook who spent

1:18.6

a fortune on food to living as a homeless hostile dwelling member of the underclass,

...

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